Reimagining Human Rights

"With this book William O'Neill presents an original and compelling reimagining of human rights. He reverses the hermeneutical flow so as to rethink human rights as the grammar of dissent and in so doing opens an exciting and challenging new seam of enquiry about our obligations to each other in a pluralist and global context." — Linda Hogan, professor of ecumenics, Trinity College Dublin

"It is when we recognize the stories of the victims that we begin to speak of human rights, responsibilities, and social transformation.... O'Neill's reminder that human rights, religion, and the common good are intrinsically linked to the safeguarding of human dignity is key to deepening our common human experience." — Elias O. Opongo, SJ, director of the Centre for Research, Training and Publications, Hekima Institute of Peace Studies and International Relations (HIPSIR), Hekima University College, Nairobi, Kenya

"In compact yet lyrical prose, O'Neill synthesizes and extends his scholarly reflections on political philosophy, restorative justice, refugee rights, and Catholic social thought." — Commonweal Magazine

"Even without a strong knowledge of the philosophers to which O'Neill is referring, his arguments are interesting and bring an important corrective to ongoing discussions of human rights." — Review of Politics

"I commend this book firmly for human rights scholars and ethicists, especially those within Catholic traditions. It goes beyond legal reflection to engage with the rhetorical value of rights, enabling the voices of activists and victims to contribute substantively to reimagining human rights." — Studies in Christian Ethics

"Reimagining Human Rights is just the book we need in an age when critics are increasingly decrying the language of human rights, the rule of law, and representative democracy as vectors of Western cultural and economic neo-imperialism." — Theological Studies

"William R. O'Neill has given us a demanding and rewarding book. With a range and depth of scholarship that is awe inspiring, Reimagining Human Rights: Religion and the Common Good reintroduces us to what has surely been the most important moral discourse of our time — the grammar and the practice of human rights." — Hastings Center Report